This essay describes some of the benefits and promise of open science. It's intended for a broad audience. Comments and suggestions would be most welcome! - Michael Nielsen

Great essay. My first comment is concerning participation of scientists in commenting system: I wonder if the rule 90-9-1 applies here? When we look at the activity in the LS room it's clear that majority of members are rather passive. - Pawel Szczesny

Lots of good stuff here - what is it with shoes though? People in barcelona were also on about selling shoes...and books to be fair - Cameron Neylon

What's the shoe story from Barcelona, Cameron? - Michael Nielsen

Great essay... Might be food for discussion at BarCamb-2. - Jan Aerts

Pawel - It'd be interesting to have some data on that question, e.g., for PLoS ONE, and comparison to other sites, like Slashdot. - Michael Nielsen

http://scienceblogs.com/pontiff... - Bora Zivkovic

This is going to be required reading the first week in my science classes! - LPH™ and his dog P™

LPH - I'd be very interested to hear what your classes make of it! - Michael Nielsen

Absolutely - LPH™ and his dog P™

It seems like a special case of the general class of intellectual property problems? Short term, you can have some kind of rights management that facilitates the kind of trust networks mentioned in the essay. Shoe stores sell commodities... whereas a brilliant idea could be worth nothing, or billions. Long term, you would need to radically change the economics. People might give away a certain amount for free, but they want to be able to pay their rent too, and profit from their ideas. - Karim

If you can solve the problem for music, movies, books, and software, you can solve it for science ;-) - Karim

Karim - You're certainly right that it is a special case of the general class of intellectual property problems. Unfortunately, the analysis of IP problems that people like Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler have done for popular culture (e.g., music, movies, books etc) does not hold in the case of science, because of the very different economic model used to support scientists... - Michael Nielsen

No? I'm ignorant of how it does, but then again I haven't given it much thought either. :-) I know a grant isn't *strictly* equivalent to a book deal ;-) but there are some similarities... - Karim

It's the long term economics that are significantly different. And who owns and controls the rights. - Deepak Singh

@Michael the shoe story from Barcelona was 'The internet is better for selling shoes than doing science. What we need to realise is all the issues that made that possible. Perhaps seeing the fully web based science as 'impossible' is just the same situation as e.g. Amazon would have faced ten years ago' slightly paraphrasing John Wilbanks but the point was think back to no method of delivery, no secure online payments, no appropriate stock managements systems etc etc - Cameron Neylon

excellent essay - posted my comment there! Thanks! - Björn Brembs

This may be very useful in explaining the vision to those not operating directly in STM activities but providing support through services, tools, etc.. - Jill O'Neill

Jill - I hope so. If you do use it in this context, I'd be very interested to hear how it goes. - Michael Nielsen

Bjoern - Thanks for the thoughtful comment, will try to respond in the next 24 hours. - Michael Nielsen

Excellent article with lots of food for thought! - Jo Vermeulen

Hoping to have well chosen my first like on your (actually beautiful) feed ;) Love :) - Valentina*